Body on the beach. Polcare Cove. Immediate response required. Secure the area and report back.

Who phoned it in? he wanted to know.

Cliff walker and a local resident. They would meet him at Polcare Cottage.

Which was where?

Bloody hell, man. Use your effing head.

Mick gave the radio two fingers. He started the car and pulled onto the road. He’d get to use the lights and the siren, which generally happened only in summer when a tourist in a hurry made a vehicular misjudgment with dire results. At this time of year, the only action he usually saw was from a surfer anxious to blast into the water of Widemouth Bay: Too much speed into the car park, too late to brake, and over the edge onto the sand he’d go. Well, Mick understood that urgency. He felt it himself when the waves were good and the only thing keeping him from his wet suit and his board were the uniform he wore and the thought of being able to wear it-right here in Casvelyn-into his dotage. Messing up a sinecure was not in his game plan. They did not refer to a posting in Casvelyn as the velvet coffin for nothing.

With siren and lights, it still took him nearly twenty minutes to reach Polcare Cottage, which was the only habitation along the road down to the cove. The distance wasn’t great as the crow flies-less than five miles-but the lanes were no wider than a car and a half, and, defined by farmland, woodland, hamlet, and village, not a single one of them was straight.

The cottage was painted mustard yellow, a beacon in the gloomy afternoon. It was an anomaly in an area where nearly every other structure was white, and in further defiance of local tradition, its two outbuildings were purple and lime, respectively. Neither of them was illuminated, but the small windows of the cottage itself streamed light onto the garden that surrounded it.

Mick silenced the siren and parked the police car, although he left the headlamps on and the roof lights twirling, which he considered a nice touch.